The Unearthings
A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
Photomontage
Performative Drawing
Act of Listening
About
@hortus_silvam
2020
Performance
Initially conceived in response to a request to create a ‘one minute sculpture’ as espoused by Erwin Wurm.
Single channel HD video | short film | colour | 2’41” | sound
Erwin Wurm, speculated on how the restrictions of a sculpture could be overcome using everyday objects and limiting the sculpture’s life to only one minute. However, the weight of water and the length of time it took to empty the watering can were unexpected.
In this absurd action lurked conflicting, tangled, unsettling references: astrological Aquarius as a woman bearing the weight of water; the women and children who carry the world’s water; the stereotypes of purity and desire; the metaphors of forgetfulness, fecundity, of Biblical floods; the drowned women of a British Victorian imagination that haunts the site of this forest garden; the washing and watering, and our profligate expectations in the West.
Location: Forest Garden, Suffolk, UK
The Unearthings is a generic title that encloses a series of flexible performative acts and interventions, involving a range of materials and repetitions, influenced and shaped by the Forest Garden Project.
performance, absurdity, water, mythology
© Sophie Standford